NewDad w/ Freak Slug

Life is all about balance, and for every dream experience that shakes up your world, there’s often a sacrifice to be made. NewDad have had plenty of the former since releasing their debut single ‘How’ in 2020 and steadily building an ever-burgeoning fanbase around their spellbinding dream-pop. They’ve released a critically-acclaimed debut album in 2024’s ‘Madra’, gained a fan in their ultimate hero, The Cure’s Robert Smith, and toured parts of the world they never thought they’d get to visit. But for all that to be possible, the Galway three-piece have had to give up some things, too. Around four years ago, the band – singer/guitarist Julie Dawson, guitarist Sean O’Dowd, drummer Fiachra Parslow – left their home behind and moved to London. It’s a relocation that’s helped them thrive as a group, but is also something that Dawson still has mixed feelings about. “Most days I wake up and I’m like, ‘Yes, let’s fucking do this’, but I do still miss home,” she explains. That tension between knowing you’re where you need to be right now and longing to be somewhere else colours ‘Altar’, NewDad’s highly anticipated second album. Started shortly before the release of ‘Madra’, it’s deeply informed by Dawson’s yearning for home, for family and the place that she truly belongs. In some ways, the record is a tribute to Galway, the singer in reverence of her hometown. “The album itself is where I divulge my love for home,” Dawson shares, nodding to its title. “It’s the idea that Ireland is the altar and it’s the thing that I worship, in a way.” The meaning that imagined altar takes on has multiple layers to it, too. It’s a reference to the sacrifice the band has made in putting hundreds of miles between them and the people they cherish most – “Sacrifice is another thing that happens at altars; I haven’t seen it, but I’ve heard that happens,” Dawson laughs. ‘Altar’ also taps into some of the themes in the lyrics of “appeasing people, and that’s what you do at altars – appease a…